Downtown Redwood City Precise Plan, EIR, and On-Call CEQA Services

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Redwood City not only has redwoods, it has the only active deep water port in the southern San Francisco Bay and its Downtown is known as an entertainment hub, with unique retail, entertainment and restaurant experiences.

MIG completed the City’s General Plan and later a program EIR, which improves the pedestrian, bicycle and transit environment of Downtown Redwood City while retaining the area’s historic character.

Key EIR issues included aesthetics (with an extensive shadow impacts analysis), land use and planning, historic resources (including a comprehensive downtown historical resources inventory), transportation (incorporating a pedestrian-priority mitigation approach), public services, noise, air quality and climate change.

Because the EIR was comprehensively prepared anticipating using CEQA streamlining provisions for future individual projects, it’s now the foundation for MIG’s On-Call CEQA Services to the City for reviewing downtown project applications and preparing initial studies—using streamlining provisions available in CEQA and based on the MIG-prepared Downtown Precise Plan EIR. The on-call work includes reviewing project application materials for completeness (including necessary technical studies) and evaluating potential environmental impacts of the proposed projects against the Precise Plan EIR, as well as mitigation monitoring and reporting program using CEQA Guidelines Appendix G (Environmental Checklist Form). MIG also prepares the initial studies, including a determination of what, if any, additional CEQA analysis is required.

The Downtown projects proposed included multifamily residential, office and mixed-use residential-retail and office-retail developments. As of early 2024, MIG had completed 17 initial studies, and all the projects had been approved.